Just after Christmas, I flew to the West Coast with Liz, Rufus, and Duncan for a two-week visit that started in southern California, where for a week we stayed in an apartment on California Avenue just west of Caltech. There Max Delbrück had arranged for me to give a lecture honoring the recently deceased Jean-Jacques Weigle. I had always enjoyed Jean's nimble brain both at Caltech and when visiting him in his hometown of Geneva, where he did phage experiments in the summer. Afterward we drove up to San Francisco, where W. A. Benjamin held a book party to mark the appearance of the third edition of The Molecular Biology of the Gene. Like the first and second editions, its sales over five years would approach a hundred thousand copies.
Then working at Cold Spring Harbor developing a powerful new way to clone genes was the thirty-two-year-old Tom Maniatis. His highly innovative experiments at Harvard as a postdoc with Mark Ptashne had led to his recent appointment as assistant professor. Initially he was to come to Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory for only a year for work, returning to Harvard upon its building of facilities for animal cell experimentation. In collaboration with Argiris Efstratiadis of Fotis Kafatos's Harvard lab, Tom was using messenger RNA molecules from red blood reticulocytes as templates to make full-length double-stranded DNA copies of the ß globin gene. No biohazard possibilities could arise from such experiments, so despite the recombinant DNA moratorium, Tom and his four young collaborators were able to move full steam ahead in their Demerec Laboratory space.
With Rufus (right) and Duncan in 1973
By then, his well-directed intelligence had also caught the attention of Caltech's biology department. Caltech let Tom know it was prepared to make him a tenured member of its faculty. Upon learning this, Mark Ptashne got BMB to ask Henry Rosovsky to move quickly in assembling an ad hoc committee and win approval to offer him a tenured associate professorship. In February I went back to Harvard to attest to Tom's accomplishments before Derek Bok. As expected, Tom was approved.
Resignation…
The worry for Harvard all too soon became the possibility that Tom might choose to accept Caltech's offer anyway. The ever more vocal in-house opposition to recombinant DNA experimentation within the Biological Laboratories was hardly an inducement to prefer Harvard. The newly appointed assistant professor Ursula Goodenough and George Wald's wife, Ruth Hubbard, also a scientist, were claiming recombinant DNA experimentation using E. coli might put the women in the Bio Labs at risk of cystitis. Both should have known that over the past ten years live E. coli cells had been regularly ground up by the pound by men and women alike without a single case of illness.
…and response
Initially Mark and Tom did not worry, knowing that Henry Rosovsky was not one to be intimidated by such nonsense, whose source was mainly left-wing elements that had been gaining ground on campus ever since the occupation of University Hall, and which after Vietnam had been further energized by Watergate. It did not matter to Rosovsky that at a public meeting in late May more students had been moved by the rhetoric of Richard Lewontin, Harvard's population geneticist, railing against future capitalistic exploitation of DNA research than had been stirred by my pleas to get on with cancer research using recombinant DNA. Henry Rosovsky sided with scientific progress and gave Harvard scientists the go-ahead to continue the controversial research. So Harvard's “science for the people” leaders took their case to the Cambridge City Hall and its populist mayor, Alfred Vellucci, always keen to put the Harvard elite in their place. At George Wald's urging, he and his fellow councilmen held hearings on June 27 and July 7, 1976, after which they voted for a three-month moratorium on recombinant DNA research within Cambridge city limits. Tom now felt going back to Harvard would be to enter a state of chaos, and so he accepted Caltech's offer, as feared.
Before reaching that decision, Tom had seen me very angered by Harvard for very different reasons when I appeared in his Cold Spring Harbor lab late in the evening directly following my return from several days in Cambridge. Derek Bok had invited me to his office in Massachusetts Hall, and I was expecting that Harvard would bid me farewell in some meaningful way. But for my presence at the Biological Laboratories for the past twenty years, its science would have commanded much less attention from the outside world. Wally Gilbert might very well still be a physicist, while Matt Meselson, and likely also Mark Ptashne, would be teaching in California. To my dismay, Derek's goodbye was entirely perfunctory, giving not a hint that my departure was any loss for Harvard or any detriment to its future.
At the start of June, I flew back to Boston for my last visit to University Hall as a member of its faculty. That afternoon, Henry Rosovsky and I tried hard not to focus on the fact that I was soon to be gone. It was easier to talk about George Wald's pretentious irresponsibility in opposing recombinant DNA. After twenty minutes of not wanting to say goodbye, I thanked Henry for trying so hard to get Harvard on the animal cell bandwagon. If I had not become irreversibly committed to Cold Spring Harbor, together we would have won. Realizing it was almost time for his next appointment, Henry, to my surprise, revealed that in looking over my salary history he noticed that I had always been paid too little. It was his way of saying he liked me. He and I knew that I would be sad walking out of Harvard Yard that day. Even I was not entirely immune to the old chestnut that there is no life after Harvard.
Remembered Lessons
1. Avoid boring people
Never make dull speeches that easily could be delivered by someone else. Predictable words naturally compel audiences to tune out and lock their pocketbooks. Just as tedious is bringing small groups of busy people together for committee meetings with no opportunity for them to offer real input. This is on a par with holding meetings where talk is not followed by meaningful decisions. In both circumstances, committee members will likely soon stop attending gatherings they know will be a waste of their time. Not boring others, of course, requires that you take pains not to become boring, as often happens when you begin to bore yourself. A leader's mind must continually be reconfigured through exposure to new patterns of acting and thinking. Reading the same papers and magazines as everyone else around you is not likely to make you an interesting dinner guest, let alone alter your consciousness. In my case, a subscription to the Times Literary Supplement, courtesy of my father-in-law, made me more interesting to sit beside than someone whose diet was limited to Time, Newsweek, or the Economist—or Nature for that matter.
2. Delegate as much authority as possible
Administrators, like scientists, do their jobs best when left alone to do them, freed of the irksome impression of simply carrying out someone else's will. My growing avoidance of micromanagement left me always available to give advice about matters that were not obvious. On learning how my staff wanted to proceed, I generally gave them a go-ahead. Few mistakes were made that closer oversight might have avoided.
3. Institutions are either moving forward
or they are moving backward
There is no downtime in the management of high-powered science. New ideas or techniques need to be quickly exploited before scientists elsewhere do experiments that your people could have done first. Success automatically creates the need for new personnel and facilities that often require new buildings. If you are not ever agile in moving forward, the consequences will go beyond losing credit for the next breakthrough; top staff will move elsewhere to get the resources and support required to maintain their own leadership roles in their respective disciplines. As in sports, last year's championship doesn't count at the end of this season. Therefore, never be or expect other scientists to be sentimental about institutions. Going down with the ship is nuts.
4. Always buy adjacent property that comes up for sale
An institution's growth inevitably demands expanding the size of its campus. Therefore, never hesitate to buy land abutting yours even if there is no immediate use for it. Though the seller will charge you a premium knowing that land is worth more to someone with an adjacent lot
than it is to a third party, your bargaining power is still greater than it will be when space is a dire need. It pays to overpay a little now rather than wait till your neighbor has you over a barrel.
5. Attractive buildings project institutional strength
Sometimes it seems money could be saved by building facilities that are less extravagant, with cheaper materials and unknown architects. This, however, is bad for business in the long term. Donors to Harvard never need fear that a building with their name on it will one day be sold off to stanch a hemorrhaging negative cash flow. Less than sturdy structures give out messages that their institution's life may be equally short. In contrast, solid, stylish buildings give donors the confidence that their descendants will one day bask in reflected glory. The lure of permanence inspires generosity.
6. Have wealthy neighbors
Research grants, no matter how much overhead they cover, are never enough to meet immediate needs. Unlike universities that can depend upon rich alumni, research institutions must have rich neighbors nearby who are inclined to take pride in local accomplishments. Typically their enthusiasm will be proportional to the research effort's potential to alleviate human misery. Nothing attracts money like the quest for a cure for a terrible disease.
7. Be a friend to your trustees
Entering worlds where your trustees relax—joining their clubs or vacationing where they go with their families in the summer, for instance—is a good way to put relations on a social footing. Seeing you as more friend than suppliant will incline them to go the extra distance for you in a pinch.
8. All take and no give will disenchant your benefactors
Philanthropy is a two-way street. The kindness of individuals donating to your cause should be acknowledged with a reciprocal gift to theirs. This by no means implies matching their generosity—it's the thought that counts. Since coming to Cold Spring Harbor, I have always made at least modest gifts to my trustees’ other charities. By my so doing, they know I value the other activities that also give purpose to their lives. Equally important is being generous to your own institution. Why should others help if you don't also show you consider the cause worthy of some of your own discretionary income? It never hurts when those who decide your salary see you bite the bullet to give some of it back.
9. Never appear upset when other people deny
you their money
Philanthropists are like others in not wishing to be taken for granted. Your institution is but one of many with its hand out. Soon after I became director, I approached the Bell Labs for sponsorship. My intermediary was a key scientist there who personally knew the value of our summer courses. When he called to say no money was coming our way, I expressed rude anger. Within minutes, I knew what a fool I had been to scotch any chance of our being shown some love in the future.
10. Avoid being photographed
You may raise the money but your success in the end totally depends upon those whose work you host, so it is their visibility, not yours, that matters. If they are not presentable, you are in deep trouble. Photos that put their names to their faces help them move more effectively in the outside world. They may not consider themselves photogenic, but they will enjoy the pride their spouses and especially their mothers will take in seeing them. Most important, keep your face out of your in-house publication unless you can be pictured beside a recognizable celebrity, such as Muhammad Ali or Lance Armstrong. Some of their glamour will momentarily rub off on you.
11. Never dye your hair or use collagen
A dye job works only if your hair is not noticeably thinning. It's impossible to seem as genuine as you must with a wan pate showing through a scattering of coal-black hairs. Of course, the impression of youthful vitality men sometimes cultivate with reddish dyes is even more disastrous. You wind up looking like Strom Thurmond. Gray hair and wrinkles at fifty bespeak dependability. Contrary to our present national ethos, it's better to act younger than you look, rather than the reverse. Harvard's Pusey had a wrinkleless face that reinforced the impression of a life devoid of pain or pleasure.
12. Make necessary decisions before you have to
Success more often comes from being first to take action than from being cleverer than your competitors. When it's the right thing to do, do it fast. If you wait too long, someone else is bound to propose it first and you will find yourself following someone else's agenda. In such circumstances, those taking orders from you will have reasonable cause to wonder why you are getting the top salary.
EPILOGUE
THIRTY years on, it would please me to report that the state of science at Harvard had righted itself in a manner befitting the world's richest and most influential university. The relatively short reign of Larry Summers as its twenty-seventh president, however, suggests that Harvard is once again headed in the wrong direction. Nothing may have distinguished Summers's time in office like the leaving of it, but his proposals for the future of science—which have yet to be modified by his successor—figured more critically in his vexed relations with the faculty than any clumsy words that marked his ultimate undoing. That the catalyst should have been his uttering an unpopular, though by no means unfounded, hypothesis only compounds the sorrows that any thinking person must feel contemplating the future of free inquiry at Harvard.
Despite Larry Summers's professed desire to move science onto Harvard's front burner, as his vision became clear many leading scientists on the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) were increasingly worried. Prominent among the uneasy was Tom Maniatis, who came back from Caltech in 1981 to become Professor of Molecular Biology. In his time at Harvard, Maniatis had been at the forefront of work in gene isolation and cloning, as well as a significant player in the biotechnology industry. And so it was notable when in the spring of 2003, he went to Massachusetts Hall to voice his concerns about Summers's plan to make Harvard the engine of a “second Silicon Valley,” whose center would be a vast new campus of biology and medicine on Harvard-owned land across the Charles River in Allsten. The Allsten vision was to be dominated by “translational research”—a term denoting science highly directed toward immediate application and, one might add, marketing. Tom was no stranger to the development of medical advances from cutting-edge science. He had, after all, founded with Mark Ptashne the successful biotech firm Genetics Institute and his lab had recently undertaken work on ALS. If anyone could appreciate a scientific utopia, it was he. In Tom's mind, however, Summers's plans would further weaken the already feeble heart of Harvard's historically distinguished pure biology programs still located in laboratories along Divinity Avenue to the immediate north of Harvard Yard.
Maniatis had barely begun to voice his opinions when Summers, oblivious to his visitor's distress, seized control of the conversation, using the remainder of the appointed hour to expound on his grand vision of how Harvard should move forward. He asked a purely rhetorical question: Should the president of Harvard be guided by the views of the perennial winners in the research game at Harvard or by the losers? By “the winners,” Summers meant the Medical School, whose clinical studies had in recent decades brought the university its lion's share of awards and patents; “the losers” were the practitioners of basic science at FAS, which despite employing illustrious figures like Tom had lagged behind its rivals, most notably and proximately MIT. Summers would afterward inform a close aide that his meeting with Maniatis had gone extremely well; Tom meanwhile had walked out of Massachusetts Hall seething and more apprehensive than ever about the future of science at Harvard.
Only two years later Summers's inability to get outside his own head landed him in fatally hot water. It reached the boiling point following his appearance at a conference sponsored by the National Bureau of Economic Research on women in science, which was held in Cambridge in mid-January 2005. There he suggested that the relatively small number of women in tenured positions in the physical sciences might in part be attributable to a lower frequency among women as compared to men of inn
ate potential for doing science at the highest level. Aware that many women would not take kindly to these words, he was careful to leave open the alternative explanation that in the past many talented women had been strongly discouraged by their teachers from ever trying to master top-level mathematics and sciences.
Summers's remarks might have gone unnoticed outside the meeting were it not for the presence of my former student, now a professor of biology at MIT, Nancy Hopkins. Over the past decade she had worked tirelessly and effectively to improve the working conditions of women scientists there. Before Nancy's highly visible efforts, the salaries and space assignments of women at MIT were notably unequal to those of their male counterparts. But Nancy did not challenge Summers at the meeting. Instead she instantly bolted from the room, later saying Summers's words made her sick, and soon appeared on national TV attacking him and setting off a firestorm of feminist anger.
It did Nancy Hopkins no particular credit as a scientist to admit that the mere hypothesis that there might be genetic differences between male and female brains—and therefore differences in the distribution of one form of cognitive potential—made her sick. Anyone sincerely interested in understanding the imbalance in the representation of men and women in science must reasonably be prepared at least to consider the extent to which nature may figure, even with clear evidence that nurture is strongly implicated. To my regret, Summers, instead of standing firm, within a week apologized publicly three times for being candid about what might well be a fact of evolution that academia will have to live with. Except for the psychologist Steve Pinker, no prominent Harvard scientist voiced a word in Summers's defense; I suspect the majority were fearful of being tarred with the brush of political incorrectness. If I were still a member of the faculty, the number of tenured scientists standing visibly behind the president in this matter would have literally doubled. But that would not have been enough to put out the flames. Apparently desperate, Summers soon contritely proposed a $50 million kitty to recruit more women to Harvard's senior science faculty.
Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science Page 32